Bee Hive Smart Sensor Technology for Optimal Development of the Bees

Beekeeping as any other agricultural activity is evolving all the time and (regular) use of Bee Hive Smart Sensor as a tool is just a matter of time. All beekeepers, especial the ones who are keeping bees for hobby – personal satisfaction, think how much we know about our precious bees, but is it just feeling that we get over the years of beekeeping? Did you have a moment in you beekeeping carrier when one year, you did something (move old brood, add new queen …) and next year you did it the same but results were totally different?

Because the world of bees is so complex there is an old saying among beekeepers:

The beekeeper is learning about the bees all his life.

Probably we will never know all secrets and behavior of the bees but today with all technology out there, we can get really close to understand and monitor lifecycle of our bee colony.

I believe that bees (and every other animal out here) are not primarily human, economic slaves, whose main task is the production of bee products, but animals that deserve a life in a healthy environment.

This means that the health of bee colony comes first, and then the bee’s crop, which is result of (equilibrium) life.

Why I`m telling you that?

Because I think all smart technology should be used, first to provide the perfect environment for bee development and the production of bee products should only be a by-product. This is a long-term approach that will satisfy the beekeeper and give value to the nature that gives us so much if we respect her.

Key factors to monitor in bee colony every year:

Size / population of bees (only strong bee colony can take care of themselves properly).

Age of bee queen (not older than 3 years).

Age of honeycomb (you should replace at least ⅓ of all honeycomb with a new one).

Wireless temperature, humidity and CO2 monitoring in large areas, with just one base station that can support 1-100 wireless sensors within line-of-sight range of 3km/1.9mi;

Receiving alerts via phone or e-mail for critical sensor readings;

Cost-effective solutions with included data analysis software

Optimised UI/UX for desktop and mobile use;

Operating as a safe, private network with an embedded local web-server that’s not dependent on any third party service provider (more secure data).

With the installment of the Aranet wireless temperature probe, we avoided causing extra distress to the beehive and loss of valuable heat inside the brood nest. Moreover, the Aranet systems provided us with valuable data necessary to monitor beehives 24/7. (Aleksejs Zacepins, research LLU)

How useful (in practice) is the Bee Hive Smart Sensor Technology?

The mission of the Bee Hive Smart Sensor Technology is to gain valuable real-time data about the temperature of the brood nest, overall health, and development of the bees. These real-time and historical data the beekeeper can use to take proper action and provide the most optimal environment in the beehive for development of the bee colony.

However, I think that all existing Bee Hive Smart Technology on the market is still quite a new (unknown) tool for beekeepers and I`m sure it`s very useful but the real issue (from beekeepers point of view) is how to use all this data that we can extract from single bee colony?

I think that the (company) provider of beehive smart technology who will combine data monitoring and data processing/analysis will gain the most on the market because one without another is not useful at the end.

In near future, I will definitely try this (smart) technology to better understand the development of my bees, but as wrote, to make sense at the end all beekeepers will need to learn how to use all this data, with the help of others or by learning over the years, by them self.

Beekeeper since 1999. I`m beekeeping with carnolian bees and my life is full of new challenges. My mission on Beetime is to present my experience and report about interesting topics from beekeeping world.